As networks and the internet have become pervasive and used by businesses and individuals around the world, more data is stored in storage mediums attached to networks and the internet. Data is defined as any information whether it be text, images, video, audio or other representational or nonrepresentational information. Search engines and directories were created by many individuals and companies with the explicit purpose of fielding queries from users, making searches of stored data, then, returning the results of the query to the user. Currently, search engines and directories such as Cha Cha, Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, About, AltaVista, Ask, MSN Search, AOL Search, Open Directory (DMOZ), Looksmart, Lycos and other search engines provide their search service via servers connected to networks and the internet. Users generally connect to search engines via client devices connected to networks or the internet.
The primary mechanism of making a search of a search engine is to navigate to a web page of the search engine where a form is presented. The user manually types characters, words, or phrases known as a query term into this form and clicks a button on the form or the “Enter” key on the keyboard to transmit the query term to the search engine for processing. No search engine currently offers an implemented solution allowing users to make queries by speaking the query term into a voice or speech recognition system, converting the spoken words to data and then processing the data to perform a search engine query.
Speech recognition technology has developed over the past 25 years to the point that speech recognition systems are available from multiple sources for use in automated speech recognition telephone directories, as word processing systems, as dictation systems and in embedded systems. They function at variable levels of effectiveness due to limitations of the software understanding the complexities and variabilities of human speech. Attempts to utilize speech recognition in making search engine queries have been very limited. One example is the use of speech recognition in cell phones where a limited set of keywords are programmed into the system, to be recognized when a user speaks into a cell phone. The keywords act as an index of a cell phone's directory, but the system does not allow query term searches of search engines to be made by speaking conversational words into a cell phone. In addition, off the shelf speech recognition software does not allow for direct speech recognition instigated query term searches of search engines on the internet.
In addition to the foregoing systems the “Voice Interface for a Search Engine”, U.S. Pat. No. 7,027,987 discloses a system that receives a voice search query from a user, derives one or more recognition hypotheses, each being associated with a weight, from the voice search query, and constructs a weighted boolean query using the recognition hypotheses. The system then provides the weighted boolean query to a search system and provides the results of the search system to a user, the uniqueness of the system being it's recognition hypotheses, weighting methods and construction of weighed boolean query. The patent clearly describes a specific method of speech recognition, and is not functional with other speech recognition methods.
In another example shown by “Language Independent Search System”, U.S. Pat. No. 6,999,932 the patent discloses a language independent, voice based user interface method that includes receiving voice input data spoken by a user, identifying a language spoken by the user from the voice input data, converting the voice input data into a first text in the identified language by recognizing the user's speech in the voice input data based at least in part on the language identifier, parsing the first text to extract a keyword, and using the keyword as a command to an application. Further actions include receiving results of the command, converting the results into a second text in a natural language format according to the identified language, and rendering the second text for perception by the user. This patent clearly describes a method requiring identifying a users spoken language, and then requiring parsing of speech input data for keywords, the keywords then being used as commands for an application.
In another example shown by “Voice Activated Web Browser”, U.S. Pat. No. 6,618,726 discloses a method where words are analyzed and searched against a database of topics or micro-domain areas looking for keywords. If a match occurs the words are analyzed by a subprogram associated with the specific topic area and key words are identified and other words discarded. The key words are input to a search engine or the equivalent. If no keywords are found this method parses words, inputing recognized words into an identification module where particular word groups are recognized. The keywords are identified and other words are dropped. The string of search words is then delivered to a search engine or other search facility. This patent clearly describes a method requiring making a search by analyzing and searching words against a database of topics or micro-domain areas looking for keywords and use of a subprogram to prepare keywords for input into search engine or equivalent making it difficult for non-keywords to be searched.
In another example shown by “Methods and Systems for Enabling Speech-based Internet Searches”, U.S. Pat. No. 6,934,675 discloses a system that envisions the generation of a merged word or phoneme grammar based on statistical measures, such as cohort probabilities and N-gram probabilities. Phonemes associated with spoken words contained in speech-based Internet searches are compared against either grammar to identify documents, web sites, or web pages (collectively “web sites”) which contain words which match, or are correlated to, the spoken words. The patent clearly describes a specific speech recognition method requiring generating a merged word or phoneme grammar based on statistical measures.
In another example shown by “Speech recognition method for activating a hyperlink of an internet page”, U.S. Pat. No. 6,604,076 clearly requires determining hypertexts of the hyperlinks in text information, determining corresponding first phoneme sequences of hypertexts, receiving a spoken command from a user, determining a second phoneme sequence corresponding to the spoken command, determining the hyperlink selected by the user using the first and second phoneme sequences, activating the selected hyperlink.
In another example patent application 20030115289 “Navigation in a voice recognition system” shows a method of navigating a data structure comprising a plurality of nodes, each node associated with content from a content source and at least a keyword defining the content. This embodiment requires keywords and nodes in order to operate.
In another example patent application 20060143007 “User interaction with voice information services” shows a method for speech recognition that improves recognition accuracy and the overall user experience by involving the user in a collaborative process for disambiguating possible recognition results. This is a server side speech recognition system requiring initial grammars, constrained grammars, initial entity spaces, constrained entity spaces, iterative recognition sets, iterative presentation sets and speech engine configuration and control modules.
Therefore, what is needed is a speech interface for creating a query term which is then searched for in a user chosen search engine, that can function with a variety of speech recognition systems or methods, that can perform query term searches in a variety of different search engines.